South Africa’s foot and mouth disease crisis is being tackled with an urgency that should be replicated for the country’s poultry industry.
A series of measures to stop the spread of the disease was announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his State of the Nation (SONA) address last week.
For cattle farmers facing foot and mouth disease outbreaks of crisis proportions, the interventions were forceful and immediate. They will be overseen by President Ramaphosa himself.
“We have classified foot-and-mouth disease as a national disaster and will be mobilising all necessary capabilities within the state to deal with this crisis,” he announced.
The entire national herd of 14 million cattle is to be vaccinated within the next year.
“We will work closely with the private sector to enable an efficient rollout and most importantly we will ensure that commercial, private and communal farmers have immediate access to vaccines.
“I have established a task team made up of farmer organisations and experts, working together with the Minister of Agriculture and his department, that will report to me every month about the progress we are making in dealing with this pandemic.”
This is how a disease crisis should be tackled – urgently, forcefully, in co-operation with the farming industry and driven by the president and his ministers.
None of this top-level concern was evident when the poultry industry was devastated by a bird flu outbreak in 2023. Farmers were ordered to slaughter 10 million chickens, including breeding stock. Producers were not compensated for the loss, as the law requires, nor were they helped to rebuild their businesses.
As a result, many small businesses closed, and larger producers suffered losses of billions of rand.
Unfortunately, while the world is experiencing the worst outbreaks of bird flu in history, with South Africa possibly next on the list, there is a lack of urgency to ensure that a new outbreak does not hit the nation’s chicken farmers this year, or next.
There is little or no co-operation with the private sector. The vaccination programme has stalled and poultry industry submissions on practical and affordable requirements that would unleash a mass vaccination campaign are ignored or rejected.
President Ramaphosa now has a blueprint on how to tackle animal disease crises – a task team that reports to him.
It should be put in place now for the poultry industry, involving the agriculture department, chicken farmers and private sector vetenerary experts.
The next bird flu crisis is coming. Prevention is better than cure.
